It Girl: Sarah Larson

Three years before she started dating the two-time Sexiest Man Alive — sometimes known as George Clooney — Sarah Larson, 29, won an episode of the NBC series Fear Factor. The producers of the show recruited her from the Rum Jungle, a club in Las Vegas at Mandalay Bay, where Larson go-go danced on a Plexiglas platform 20 feet in the air. For the two months she worked there, she'd fly up to her podium every evening with a rope, she says, "like Superman." Larson, you see, has no fear of heights; she plans to go skydiving for her "dirty 30" — i.e., her 30th birthday — in December. "I like the adrenaline rush," Larson says. "George is like, Have fun!"

During those heady Fear Factor days, she had trouble ingesting a scorpion in a martini glass of goopy liquid. "I spit it into the bucket," Larson says, picking at a far more palatable protein-free salad at the Polo Lounge in the Beverly Hills Hotel and sipping a cup of hot tea. She's not embarrassed about her TV stint. "Although if George had been on a reality show, I don't think I'd have talked to him. It would have been like, That's nice," she says, dismissively waving her hand. "I don't know. He still wants to date me, and I ate a scorpion."

A brunette with honey-colored skin, Larson is dressed in tall boots, a babydoll minidress by Taka Wear she bought in Vegas, a STOP GLOBAL WARMING canvas bracelet, and a pair of diamond teardrop earrings that Clooney, 47, gave her last Christmas.

Larson is the first woman in years Clooney has introduced publicly as his girlfriend. He has taken her to Dubai and Venice to promote Michael Clayton and to the Academy Awards, where she graced the red carpet in a pink-and-pale-blue Valentino gown. "It was like a modeling job — smiling and greeting people," she says. She even traveled with Clooney to Rome for the World Summit of Nobel Peace Laureates in December, where she introduced herself to the Dalai Lama, met Lech Walesa, and dined across from Mikhail Gorbachev. Though she's met Brad and Angelina — "Hung out, no" — it's the world leaders who have really impressed her. "I don't get starstruck, but meeting people like that, I get starstruck," she says.

Still, Larson and Clooney share ordinary moments too. Holed up in bed after his motorcycle collided with a car in Weehawken, New Jersey, last September, the couple watched a marathon of Rock of Love with Bret Michaels in their New York hotel room. "We caught ourselves rooting for someone or getting frustrated," Larson recalls. "And we were like, This is sad."

The eldest of three girls, Larson grew up 20 miles south of Seattle in Kent, Washington. Her mother has been a consultant for a health-insurance company; her stepfather is a computer programmer at Boeing. Her father, who died five years ago from a brain tumor, worked for a telephone company and contracted HIV not long after he and her mother divorced. "I was very young," Larson says. "After he and my mother split, he became gay. I just grew up with that being normal."

At 17, she left home to follow the band Phish on the road. "I did weird things like play tambourine while my friend played guitar so we could buy gas to get us to the next place," Larson recalls. "We'd make bracelets and trade them for food or sell grilled-cheese sandwiches." She studied microbiology at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington; worked at the school's lab; and waitressed at the local Outback Steakhouse for extra cash.

In 2002, Larson moved to Las Vegas to be closer to her ailing father, who was in Palm Springs. After toiling at a $10.50-an-hour job at a homeopathic medical company, she discovered that she could make a lot more money working at the Playboy Club and Moon at the Palms. "It's funny, you go into cocktailing and you're making a thousand dollars a night.

I thought, 'I'm going to make great money right now and have a good time. I'm young.' I wanted to buy a house; I bought a house. I don't regret any of it." Larson has held on to the Vegas home, which she shares with a roommate and two cats, Animal Cracker and Lippy Doodles.

Larson and Clooney first met about four years ago, while she was working at the Whiskey at Green Valley Ranch, a Vegas resort. The actor was celebrating his birthday. Larson says, "We were hanging out and dancing and being goofballs. Nothing crazy. We talked, that's it." She had a boyfriend then, but she didn't when she ran into Clooney again in June 2007 at the Vegas premiere of Ocean's Thirteen. "I got texts, and we just started talking. George is funny and sweet, and he's good to be around," she goes on. "I see him as a normal person, like anyone else. He just happens to have a well-known face." But she admits, "You do have to be cautious of who you let in your life. You realize who is good for you and who's not pretty quickly."

One thing that attracted her to Clooney was his work in Darfur: "It's incredible what he's doing over there, his passion to try to use his status to make a difference." And though he has a hybrid, Clooney still flies private, which Larson considers "a walking contradiction." But she says, "People get comfortable. [It's] baby steps."

Larson likes shopping for him and recently bought him some jeans. "No fancy pouffy stuff on the pockets. I think getting him a pair of True Religion jeans would be a good joke: 'I really want you to wear this, and please put your hair in a fauxhawk.'"

Though leaving behind a steady income as a cocktail waitress has been "kind of scary," Larson is focusing on modeling. "I have no desire to act," she says. "I go to these commercial castings, and they're like, Say this line. And I'm like, I suck at that!"

Lately, Larson has been reading The Secret to unlock what she wants out of life. It's a book she doesn't imagine her boyfriend will soon be borrowing. "I don't think he'd be into it," Larson says before heading to the valet to drive back to Clooney's in a black Porsche. "He'd probably be like, Eh, hocus-pocus. I don't think he has trouble getting anything he wants."

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